- The "Fake News" Story Is Fake News
Authored by Philip Weiss via MondoWeiss.net,
Almost every day on public radio or public television, I hear reports about how fake news is undermining our democracy.
These high-minded reporters and anchors seem truly to believe that a feverish menace is overwhelming the minds of once-sensible people.
This story is itself fake news for several obvious reasons.
We’ve never had more good information than we have now; people are as well-informed as they want to be. There will always be outlets purveying lies; that is the nature of communication. And the insistence on the “fake news” issue is an effort to assign Trump’s victory not to those who brought it to us (the electorate, and the incompetence of the Clinton campaign) but on some nefarious agents.
The fact that we have more and better information today than ever almost goes without saying. When I started in the news business more than 40 years ago, few reporters carried tape recorders, largely because they worked for a guild and were never subject to correction. Today there are countless outlets, thanks to the internet, and important events are almost always recorded. The amount of data we have on public figures is vast compared to even ten years ago.
We can all argue about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing; but we are today awash in information. That information is more reliable than it has ever been before. My own work on Palestine and the Israel lobby has shown me that global consumers can get more accurate information about that conflict than they’ve ever had. Yes, as we assert here all the time, the mainstream US media is in the tank for Israel; but it’s not as if better information is not available at your fingertips, much of it from Europe and Palestine, often citizen video.
Before the internet, alternative sources were much harder to obtain. You had to subscribe to journals, or go to Hotaling’s newsstand in Times Square for out-of-town papers. The best example is sports. I had to hope the newsstand had the late edition of the Times, or that the Times carried the box score for my hometown team. Today I can find out any score and see videos of my team’s performance in an instant. And the destruction of the guilds by the internet has brought us sharp commentators who would never had access to the media traditionally (like this tweeter I turn to every morning to get the score).
“Do you trust everything you read on social media?” an ad for WNYC radio asks. They used to say the same thing about newspapers when I was a kid! The idea that information used to be a clean pool before all the clever internet liars arrived is a delusion on the part of entitled reporters of the fake news storyline. Storytelling is a primordial human experience. It is rooted in the need for knowledge to enhance our survival. We tell stories in an effort to make our lives better, more fulfilling, more understandable. And from the beginning of the story, there were lies. Some say that human beings have tongues in their mouths to deceive others, while some fiction writers will tell you that artifice is the soul of story. We all learn to sort out sincere and truthful from exaggerated and bogus. No, we don’t always succeed as readers and listeners at that job, but we try. Just as reporters seek to convey accurate versions of events despite their limitations; and artificers seek to construct more perfect tales to relate social and psychological quandaries.
There are surely hundreds of thousands of news sites today (millions?) where there used to be thousands of news outlets. The great preponderance of these sites do as we do here, try and present the most genuine version of events they are able to. As Ezra Pound once said, there is only one standard for writing: accuracy of statement. It’s not rocket science, but it is a struggle.
Are there sites that try to hoodwink readers? Of course. There have always been sensational papers, yellow journalism, scandal sheets, rumors, disinformation, boys crying wolf, and unreliable sources. Readers have always had a duty to sort this out. How many of us feel that we can size up the accuracy of an unknown site in a few seconds, from one sign or another? Readers are way more sophisticated than the fake-news reporters believe them to be. More than that, we know that some of the biggest lies originate from authorities. Which gives rise to conspiracy stories, going back to Shakespeare…
The claim that liars and fake-news sites handed the election to Donald Trump is fiction. A democracy gives the franchise to a lot of stupid people, on all sides. People believe what they want to believe. No doubt the internet has served to socialize information, tailoring it to tribal audiences (I seek out that baseball tweeter because we are likeminded, still our team can’t win), but it’s not as if information was objective before. The belief that people were manipulated into voting for Trump may be comforting to those who love the neoliberal elitism and interventionism of the post-9/11 world, but it doesn’t answer the complex reality that is American society.
The smartest reporting on the 2016 election was the study showing that Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin all had high casualty rates from America’s wars; and that these voters regarded Clinton as pro-war. And Clinton failed to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan, even as her surrogates advocated for regime change in Syria on the cables. Those factors would seem to be as determinative as anything else that the big papers have told us about the debacle November 8. It would be a lot better if they would actually interview Trump voters, rather than lecturing us about fake news.
The claim that the Russians are behind fake news and they threw the election is just more fiction from a Democratic Party determined to have a new cold war in order to excuse itself from its failures to reach the white Obama voters who voted for Trump. Do people really think that the ads Russians placed on Facebook, or the data that Trump allies had access to through Cambridge Analytica, swayed people to vote for Trump? Is that how you made up your mind? Maybe a few fools changed their vote because of lies; but again that does not go to the real dynamics of the 2016 race. People disliked Clinton for good reasons. People sought a disrupter for good reasons.
If Russians were behind the Wikileaks hack of the Democratic National Committee emails, maybe we should be thanking them. The hack exposed real corruption: on my issue, the Clinton team’s active efforts to sell Clinton’s stance on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to big pro-Israel donors as a way to salve them for her support for the Iran deal. No one has disputed the accuracy of these emails, and they are a disturbing window on how politics works. It would be nice if the media would spend a little time on the substance of those emails. But no, the fake news story has a life of its own.
P.S. Judy Woodruff’s picture is atop this post because she and the PBS News Hour have taken the fake news story way too seriously. In fairness, I urge readers to watch her interview of two Boko Haram survivors, some of the best journalism you will ever see.
- All 34 Bishops In Chile Suddenly Resign Over "Absolutely Deplorable" Pedophile Priest Scandal
All 34 bishops in Chile have tendered their resignations in the wake of yet another pedophile priest scandal in which high level officials covered up the institutionalized sexual abuse of minors – even threatening officials tasked with investigating sex crimes and the destruction of evidence.
Thirty-one active bishops and three who are signed a document with their offers to resign following an emergency meeting this week with Pope Francis. Francis can accept the resignations one by one, reject them outright or delay a decision.
Calls had mounted for the resignations after details emerged of the contents of a 2,300-page Vatican report into the Chilean scandal leaked early Friday.
Francis had accused the bishops of destroying evidence of sex crimes, pressuring investigators to minimize abuse accusations and showing ‘grave negligence’ in protecting children from paedophile priests.
In one of the most damning documents from the Vatican on the issue, Francis said the entire Chilean church hierarchy was collectively responsible for ‘grave defects’ in handling cases and the resulting loss of credibility that the Catholic Church has suffered. –Daily Mail
“No one can exempt himself and place the problem on the shoulders of the others,” Francis wrote in the document published by Chile’s T13 television and confirmed as accurate Friday by the Vatican.
Responding to the 2,300-page report, Chilean bishops called the contents of the document “absolutely deplorable,” and showed an “unacceptable abuse of power and conscience,” along with sexual abuse.
The bishops asked for forgiveness from the victims, the Pope and all Catholics worldwide.
Pope Francis summoned the entire bishops conference to Rome after he said he made “grave errors in judgement” in the case of Chilean priest Juan Barros – who stands accused of victims of pedophile Rev. Fernando Karadima of witnessing and ignoring their abuse.
But the scandal grew beyond the Barros case after Francis received the report written by two Vatican sex crimes experts sent to Chile to get a handle on the scope of the problem.
Their report hasn’t been made public, but Francis cited its core findings in the footnotes of the document that he handed over to the bishops at the start of their summit this week.
And those findings are damning. –Daily Mail
While some of the pedophile priests and brothers were expelled from their congregations following the discovery of “immoral conduct,” many had their cases “minimized of the absolute gravity of their criminal acts, attributing them to mere weakness or moral lapses,” wrote Francis.
Those same offenders “were then welcomed into other dioceses, in an obviously imprudent way, and given dicoesan or parish jobs that gave them daily contact with minors,” wrote the pope.
The harsh assessment of the quality of seminaries suggests that a possible next step might be a full-on Vatican investigation of Chilean schools of priestly training.
Pope Benedict XVI ordered such an investigation into Irish seminaries after he convened the entire Irish bishops’ conference for a similar dressing-down in 2010 over their dismal handling of abuse cases. –Daily Mail
“The problems inside the church community can’t be solved just by dealing with individual cases and reducing them to the removal of people, though this – and I say so clearly – has to be done,” Francis wrote.
“But it’s not enough, we have to go beyond that. It would be irresponsible on our part to not look deeply into the roots and the structures that allowed these concrete events to occur and perpetuate.”
Francis Knew
For all of the “holier-than-thou” admonishments in his letter, Pope Francis is not without blame. The Associated Press reported earlier this year that Francis drew scorn over his appointment of Barros bishop of Osnoro, Chile, in 2015.
The Associated Press reported earlier this year that Francis did so over the objections of other Chilean bishops who knew Barros’ past was problematic and had recommended he and other Karadima-trained bishops resign and take a sabbatical.
The AP subsequently reported that Francis had received a letter in 2015 from one of Karadima’s most vocal accusers, Juan Carlos Cruz, detailing Barros’ misdeeds. That letter undercut Francis’ claim to have never heard from victims about Barros.
Francis further enraged Chileans and drew sharp rebuke from his top abuse adviser when, during a January trip to Chile, he said the accusations against Barros were ‘calumny’ and said he was ‘certain’ he was innocent.
Not so certain now, are we Pope?
- One Angry, Disillusioned Philly Resident Reflects On "30 Blocks Of Slavery"
Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
“Trump is my brother. You don’t have to agree with Trump but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.” – Kanye West
The last few weeks has seen far too much honesty for the Democrat Party slave owners in Washington D.C. and the other liberal urban ghetto strongholds, as a couple uppity blacks have dared to question the liberal narrative. It all started when Kim Kardashian’s better half – Kanye West – dared to go off the plantation and speak his mind about Donald Trump, Candace Owens and black people in general. His tweet about Candace Owens started the shitstorm.
“I love the way Candace Owens thinks.”
It seems innocent enough, but Candace Owens happens to be a young black woman who has become a social media Twitter sensation because she promotes conservative values and criticizes the black victim-hood narrative promoted by liberal politicians and their mainstream media mouthpieces. Twitter exploded with outrage from the left and accolades from the right. Never to let an opportunity pass, Trump promptly tweeted:
“Thank you Kanye, very cool!”
The outrage and vitriol only grew more intense as Twitter exploded over the next few days. Trump, who Democrats and the left wing media constantly portray as a racist, again received props from another well known black rap artist – Chance the Rapper—who tweeted:
“Black people don’t have to be democrats.”
You could practically see the heads of Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Chuckie Schumer, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Cuomo exploding simultaneously as their black victim-hood narrative began to unravel. How dare these rogue black men and woman question the standard orthodoxy of the left, used to elect Democrats for decades in the deteriorating urban shitholes in which blacks overwhelmingly inhabit.
The left’s powerful hold on black voters is dependent upon them believing the welfare state benefits the black community. Any discussion of personal responsibility, jobs, marriage, and real education would loosen the chains enslaving blacks in Democrat controlled districts across the country. Smelling liberal bloodletting, Trump immediately poured gasoline on the growing fire with this tweet:
“Kanye West has performed a great service to the Black Community – Big things are happening and eyes are being opened for the first time in Decades – Legacy Stuff! Thank you also to Chance and Dr. Darrell Scott, they really get it (lowest Black & Hispanic unemployment in history).”
Trump conveniently ignores the fact the number of blacks not in the labor force is also at a record high. It’s amazing how low you can drive the unemployment rate if you pretend tens of millions are not really in the labor force. But why let some facts get in the way of a feel good story about black people. As liberals condemned Kanye and inferred he had lost his mind again, he managed to take the outrage to level 11 with this doozy of a tweet:
“When you hear about slavery for 400 years … For 400 years? That sounds like a choice.”
It was priceless watching left wing nutjob rage, anger and wrath against such an outrageous traitorous statement by this presumptuous black man with 28 million Twitter followers. The faux outrage on MSNBC and CNN revealed them to be as vacuous and weak minded as all critical thinking people know them to be. West was not saying slavery was not a terrible scourge and negative era in our history. He was telling black people slavery was abolished over 150 years ago, so stop blaming your problems on something that hasn’t impacted them in generations. The liberal race baiter politicians use the slavery narrative to keep blacks downtrodden on their urban ghetto plantations.
This is the same Kanye West who shocked the world by declaring Bush didn’t care about black people on national TV during a telethon for Hurricane Katrina victims. Along with his no talent fat assed reality TV star wife Kim Kardashian, Kanye West is an attention whore. It’s good for business. His tweets have elevated his name recognition and will generate more CD sales and concert sellouts. The conservative twitterphere has gone bonkers over Kanye, especially after a minuscule Reuters poll of 200 black men showed a doubling in Trump support from 11% to 22% after Kanye’s tweets.
The slavery and plantation analogy used by Kanye strikes me as appropriate, since I’ve been trekking through the urban ghetto plantation of West Philly for the last twelve years observing the slaves in their natural habitat. With the recent acquisition of a basic cheap smart phone a few months ago, I’ve been unleashed to document the 30 Blocks of Squalor with my camera. Mistimed stop lights and gaping potholes along the route make progress very slow, offering plenty of opportunity to take pictures. I believe the observable reality of West Philly confirms the points of view offered by Kanye West and Candace Owens.
In 59 voting divisions in Philadelphia, mostly in North and West Philadelphia, Mitt Romney received ZERO votes in the 2012 presidential election. The communities I pass through in West Philly are 95% occupied by black folks. In Philadelphia, Obama beat Romney by 486,000 votes in 2012 and Clinton beat Trump by 455,000 in 2016. Every urban ghetto shithole across the land, controlled by the Democrat plantation owners, sees the same result in every election. The black slaves vote overwhelmingly for their continued poverty and enslavement. The welfare mentality has been ingrained in their psyches after 50 years of Great Society programs worked their magic.
Democrats have had complete control of Philadelphia for the last six decades. The downward spiral has been accelerating as the Democrat solutions are always higher taxes, more welfare payments, bowing down to unions, corruption, and awful government run schools. The result has been white flight, business flight, dependency mentality, poverty, unpayable government union pension liabilities, politicians in prison, crime, gaping potholes, exploding water pipes, houses that collapse during a heavy rainstorm, and ever expanding squalor. The implementation of the welfare state has strengthened the chains of black slavery, insuring their subjugation in squalor.
When viewing the dilapidated hovels I’ve photographed on my daily commute through the 30 Blocks of Squalor, remember these were once well built sturdy housing occupied by people who worked for a living and took care of their homes and neighborhood. Of course, that was prior to LBJ’s Great Society promises in 1965. This despicable excuse for a human being is still revered by Democrats and black leaders despite his true thoughts about his Great Society legislation that has destroyed the black community. But, so far, his prediction has been accurate through the first 53 years:
“I’ll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years.” – Lyndon B. Johnson
This lovely duplex is located on Girard Avenue in West Philly. The city’s response to abandoned properties is to board up the windows and let nature eat away at the structure until it collapses during a heavy rainstorm (I’ve seen it happen). Notice the multiple Direct TV dishes on the building, including the boarded up side. It is baffling to me that in neighborhoods where the average household income is $15,000 (mostly welfare payments) and the average house is worth $25,000, every house has a satellite dish, every person shuffling along the streets has a smartphone, and there are a multitude of $40,000 vehicles parked on the garbage strewn streets.
The hand written sign on the side of this dilapidated crumbling fleapit says “Everything Must Go”. Everything went a long time ago. The orange sticker from the city says it’s condemned, but it looks to be in the same shape as 50% of the occupied buildings along Market Street in West Philly. It’s shocking that an Obama inspired black entrepreneur hasn’t snatched up this prime retail location and started a thriving business.
This picture captures so much of the ambiance of West Philly. You’ve got a couple ramshackle boarded up houses, the required roll down steel security shutters for every business, graffiti applied by some fine upstanding scholars, an abandoned vehicle, and garbage and trash littering the entire scene. The degradation, apathy and descent into societal abyss of this black community all wrapped up in one photograph.
I wonder if the houses in Baghdad require bars across both the downstairs and upstairs windows. It appears the two best businesses to be in along the 30 Blocks of Squalor is selling security gates and plywood. I guess if you feel it is OK to throw your trash on the street, shoveling your sidewalk is probably out of the question.
I can honestly say there are absolutely no retail establishments in my slice of suburbia that feel the need to install roll down steel security shutters or security gates when they close up shop for the evening. This requirement along the 30 Blocks of Squalor reveals an uncivilized, lawless, dangerous community, inhabited by people lacking comprehension of right and wrong. They have no sense of community or morality, as stealing, killing and throwing garbage on their streets is deemed acceptable. The local news, every evening, details the murders, robberies, rapes and assaults in this urban kill zone.
I’ve determined a perfect test for how dangerous and run down a section of West Philly is with my mural index. Democrat politicians and black community leaders seem to believe having white artists painting glorious murals portraying the black people of that community as fearless leaders, academics and heroes will actually inspire the downtrodden, ignorant, welfare dependent residents to rise up in the world. Instead, the irony is lost on these bozos, as the mural index shows – the more murals per square block, the more likely you are to be murdered on that block. With two murals side by side, you should be ducking while driving by. Interpreting the meaning of the murals must require a PhD in ebonics.
I’ve always found this biker bar to be amusing in a warped sort of way. The sign on their entrance says “Death to the KKK”. That’s an interesting message, considering the KKK is not and never has been an organization prominent in any way in Philadelphia or the Northeast United States. I’m guessing they aren’t too welcoming towards white people in that bar. I picture the black bar scene in Animal House with Otis Day singing Shama lama ding dong.
You know you are in a bad neighborhood when the Pest Control business (probably the most profitable business in West Philly) is completely encased in bars to keep the feral neighborhood dogs at bey. They are peerless in exterminating rats, roaches, mice and any other varmints frequenting your dilapidated dump.
Just before reaching the West Philly border in Upper Darby (the nice Darby – lower Darby might be worse than West Philly) a large building filled with crappy furniture pretends to be a retail store. When your main marketing message is OPEN, the quality of your merchandise is probably iffy. The little blue sign says NO CREDIT needed. They know their clientele.
A billboard further down the road for another furniture store also touts NO CREDIT NEEDED. This is the ghetto. The real unemployment rate is north of 50%. The other 50% are working at low paying shit service jobs. Only a fool would lend them money to buy furniture. Unless it’s just the plantation owners keeping the slaves subservient and subdued. The Wall Street cabal has a monopoly on credit through their control of the Federal Reserve. If the Fed provides free money to Wall Street and they charge 29% interest to poverty stricken black people who don’t understand math, they can afford high default rates. Great business plan. And if it all goes to shit, the American taxpayer will bail them out.
There is no way for poor black people in West Philly to escape their chains of debt enslavement when their only options are subprime debt to finance furniture, appliance and auto purchases. They are dependent upon the state for their welfare subsistence and eternally dependent upon the Wall Street cabal to finance their living at loan shark level interest rates and terms. The Great Society programs were supposed to lift minorities up, but they have created generations of bitter, dismayed, ignorant, dependent, poor, Democratic voters. And it all revolves around the engineered destruction of the family unit and purposeful failure to educate the children.
Government programs promoting the destruction of the black family unit have created havoc in West Philly and in urban ghettos across the land. In 1960 22% of black children lived with single parents. By 2006, the 1960 percentage had more than doubled to 56%. Less than 20% of black children were born out of wedlock in 1960. Today, 73% of black children are born out of wedlock. Amazingly, government will always get more of what it incentivizes. When welfare programs pay people more money to have children out of wedlock and not marry, this is the result. The destruction of the black family unit by Democrat policies has wrought destruction, poverty and generations of helpless slaves.
“If you want to see the poor remain poor, generation after generation, just keep the standards low in their schools and make excuses for their academic shortcomings and personal misbehavior. But please don’t congratulate yourself on your compassion.” – Thomas Sowell
Education was the only way for black people to cast off their chains, obtain jobs paying middle class wages, and rising out of poverty. Faux liberal compassion, government run schools with dumbed down standards, unionized teachers matriculating unmotivated, fatherless, ignorant kids through a demented socialization program disguised as education for an average cost of $12,000 per student has destroyed any chance for generations of black children to succeed in life and elevate their community. It’s almost as if corrupt politicians and feckless government bureaucrats want to keep their black constituents ignorant, dependent and helpless.
Despite billions spent on welfare programs to supposedly elevate poor blacks, virtually all businesses along the 30 Blocks of Squalor are owned and operated by whites and Asians. The old building on Market Street that formerly housed Dick Clark’s American Bandstand now houses the government funded Enterprise Center, an organization that counsels minority-owned businesses and disadvantaged entrepreneurs. The counseling hasn’t worked. Without strong two parent households and a good education, black entrepreneurs are more scarce in West Philly than a woman with a wedding ring. It is a wonder the white and Asian owners of steak shops and delis stay. They are robbed and shot on a regular basis.
Another fascinating observation on the 30 Blocks is the presence of H&R Block, among other national tax preparation firms. Why would this be? With average household incomes below $20,000, most of the people in West Philly pay no Federal Income taxes. Chalk it up to another welfare scam designed to help the poor and downtrodden. The Earned Income Tax Credit is available to people who don’t work and earn no income. You, the taxpayer, pay your taxes so they can be handed as tax refunds to people who pay no income taxes. The fine folks at H&R Block fill out all the forms, charge the poor people outrageous fees and then lure them into borrowing against their refunds at Shylock level interest rates.
This is how corporate America extracts their crops from the plantation. H&R Block utilizes the rampant ignorance in West Philly to generate profits. They capitalize on their lack of impulse control and delayed gratification abilities to offer them their refunds before the IRS sends the check. Meanwhile, H&R Block extracts a “fee” that equates to north of 50% interest. It’s the same story with the $70 billion food stamp program. JP Morgan administers the program and extracts hundreds of millions in fees. Wal-Mart and the other corporate mega-retailers reap the windfall of the spending. Corporate America loves the welfare state.
I have far more respect for the Muslim dude selling baby turtles next to the Phila Zoo at 34th and Girard than I do for Wall Street bankers and mega-corporations raping the poor. On hot days you will find young black guys selling cold water bottles in the stopped traffic. Given some skills and opportunity, these guys might succeed in this world. But on most days they are usually outnumbered by the lazy beggars.
As you motor around these days you might notice most of the newly constructed buildings are either banks or government offices. That should tell you everything you need to know about the winners and losers in the economy today. The newest building on the 30 Blocks of Squalor is a Social Security Administration Building. Why in the ghetto of West Philly? My guess is that after the Obama extended unemployment scam ended, deadbeats needed to fake disabilities in order to get onto the SSDI gravy train. So they made it easy for the “not in the labor force” West Philly patrons to shuffle on over to the Social Security office and pretend they have a soft tissue disability or depression or diabetes because they weigh 350 pounds. The victim-hood mentality is ingrained in this community.
I found it amusing a couple weeks ago when liberals screamed in outrage at Ben Carson’s proposal to increase the amount residents must pay towards their public housing rent from 30% to 35% of their household income. Carson, who grew up in extreme poverty in Detroit and became a neurosurgeon, captured the essence of what these welfare programs should do:
“Government should not keep people in a dependent state. It should be used as a springboard, and not as a hammock.”
The formula for public housing subsidies is warped. Just like all these programs, they encourage people not to work and not to generate “too much” income. The history of public housing has been a disaster. The picture below represents the old and the new of public housing. Both buildings are located at 45th and Market. The rat and drug infested tenement on the left is a 20 story crime scene built in the 1970s. Cops are afraid to enter this building. It will eventually be imploded, like many before it.
The new and improved public housing is of the townhouse variety. Some even have gated parking and retail storefronts built within them. Democrat politicians are sure if they build retail storefronts, retailers will come. The 8 storefront shops in the Mantua Square low income housing mecca are 100% unoccupied four years after being built with your tax dollars. Notice the gate around the low income housing townhouses. There are deadly spikes on the top of the gate. Seems like a great neighborhood where you can safely raise your fatherless children. These townhouses will deteriorate and crumble, as the residents feel entitled to free housing and will not take care of them. The spiked gate should remind them, they are still on the government plantation.
In 2014 Obama designated the 2 square miles of Mantua, in West Philly, as one of his Promise Zones, promising to redevelop the neighborhood, create jobs, and make it safe again. I drive through this neighborhood every day. Absolutely nothing has changed since 2014. A few dilapidated buildings have been bulldozed, but nothing replaced them. No new businesses. No jobs. The schools are as pathetic as ever. The murders and robberies haven’t ceased. And drug dealing is still the top job in the community. Thomas Sowell had Obama pegged:
“One of the reasons it has taken so long for some people to finally see through Barack Obama is that people do not like to admit, even to themselves, that they have been played for fools by a slick-talking politician.”
Black people have been played by Obama and other race baiting liberal politicians for decades. After spending over $10 trillion on welfare programs since 1965, the poverty rate has barely budged. The dependency mentality has been passed down though multiple generations. Liberal politicians, in conspiracy with Wall Street, the liberal media, and corporate America, have enslaved urban blacks in chains of ignorance, welfare addiction, blaming white people, immorality, and criminal mentality.
Highly educated conservative minded black men like Thomas Sowell, Walter E. Williams, and Ben Carson are scorned and ridiculed by the left. But when a rapper like Kanye, hero to millions of young black people, breaks with the plantation owners and speaks the truth, panic ensues. The liberals will circle the wagons to protect their black voting block. They will likely succeed, as it will be tough to break 50 years of trained dependency. If Trump can pull off convincing 20% of black people to vote for him and the Republican party, he will become a legend.
George Carlin’s American Dream tirade captures the essence of our predicament, and it particularly applies to the inhabitants of West Philly and all the other urban ghettos in Democrat strongholds around the country.
“There’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners, the owners of this country don’t want that.
They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, and the reduced benefits.” –George Carlin
- The Most Prosperous Cities In The US Are…
Wealthy coastal enclaves no longer have a monopoly on prosperity, according to a recent ranking by RentCafe.
After analyzing Census data from between 2000 and 2016, RentCafe ranked 303 cities according to changes in overall prosperity. RentCafe examined a mix of factors, with a final prosperity score that was based on the combined value of six individual fields. Surprisingly, Texas cities occupied six of the top 20 spots, disrupting the longstanding east coast west coast rivalry.
With crude oil prices moving higher once again, it’s hardly a coincidence that the Midland-Odessa area – one of the main employment hubs in the Permian Basin with some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country – showed up on the list.
In a separate ranking that only takes into account “large” cities (i.e. those with populations greater than 300,000), Rent Cafe discovered that Washington, New York and Miami are among the most prosperous of the major American cities.
More surprising is the number of cities that experienced growth across all six categories used to calculate prosperity.
RentCafe calculated prosperity by incorporating the magnitude of proportional changes that affected a city’s population, median income, home values, share of inhabitants holding a higher education degree, poverty rate and its unemployment rate.
- The Long Death Of America's Middle Class
Authored by Nick Giambruno via CaseyResearch.com,
In America, what separates the “haves” and the “have nots” has never been wider. It’s a genuine crisis. And yet, few people know why this is happening…
The American middle class is dying.
In 2015, it dipped below 50% of the population for the first time since data collection started on the issue. It’s now an official minority group.
Meanwhile, nearly half of Americans don’t have enough money to cover a surprise $400 expense. Many are living paycheck to paycheck, with little to no cushion. And US homes are less affordable than they’ve been in decades—possibly ever.
I’ll tell you why this is happening and how to secure your spot among the “haves” in a moment. But first, let’s take a look at the America that was.
The Largest Middle Class in World History
The late 1950s was the golden age of America’s middle class.
This isn’t nostalgia talking. The US really did have robust Main Streets and thriving small businesses.
Back then, the US produced three-quarters of the world’s cars and airplanes. Americans produced most of the world’s steel and built the majority of the world’s skyscrapers.
Plus, the US stock market held the bulk of the world’s total stock market capitalization.
All this productivity gave the average American an unusually high standard of living.
Around then, a husband could support his family on an average income. He and his wife likely owned their own home, as well as their car. They had multiple children—and didn’t think much of the cost of having more. Plus, they had money to save.
The Bleak Situation Today
Compare that to the average family today. Both spouses likely have to work—whether they want to or not—just to afford the same basic lifestyle.
Plus, it now costs well over $200,000 to raise a child, on average. And that doesn’t even include college costs. Back in 1960, it cost roughly $25,000.
This hefty price tag is one of the main reasons middle-class families are having fewer children… or none at all.
In short, the average American’s standard of living has taken a huge hit over the past generation or so.
For example, consider a typical high school teacher’s financial situation.
In 1959, the median annual salary for a US high school teacher was $5,276, according to the Department of Labor. Meanwhile, the median US home value was $9,627, according to the US Census Bureau.
That means a teacher made enough money each year to cover over half of the price of a middle-class home. Or 55%, to be exact.
Take a minute and think… How does your annual income compare to the price of your home? I’d bet many people make far less than 55%.
Today, the median purchase price of a US home is $241,700. To maintain the 1959 income-to-home price ratio, a high school teacher would need to make $132,935 annually.
Of course, the average high school teacher doesn’t make nearly that much. Not even close. He or she makes around $48,290—just enough to cover 36% of the median home price.
It All Went Downhill in the ’70s
The high school teacher’s predicament is only one example of a broader trend. In fact, circumstances are actually worse than it lets on.
As you can see in the chart below, the median income-to-home price ratio is just a hair above 20% now. That’s a historical low. And a far cry from the 58% peak it hit in the late 1950s.
Notice that the downtrend starts in the 1970s. More on that shortly…
Clearly, home prices have risen much faster than income levels since 1970.
Of course, Americans haven’t stopped buying homes. They’ve just gone deeper and deeper into debt to do it.
That debt has helped hide the slump in the average person’s standard of living.
Cars are another large expense for Americans. Debt has helped camouflage a big price increase there, too.
Americans are now over $1.1 trillion in auto debt. This figure has skyrocketed 2,954% since 1971.
Americans have also racked up more than $1 trillion in credit card debt. This debt explosion also started in the early 1970s. Credit card debt is up 14,281% since 1971.
The Work-Wage Divide
So why are Americans going deeper and deeper into debt?
It’s simple: The cost of living for the average middle-class family has risen dramatically faster than its income.
Since 1971, there’s been a dramatic—and growing—split between work and wages. As the next chart shows, the average person’s real wages have more or less stagnated since the early 1970s.
With higher expenses and stagnating wages, people have made up the difference with debt.
What Happened in 1971?
It’s no coincidence that things started to go downhill for the middle class in the early 1970s. August 15, 1971, to be exact.
This is the date President Nixon killed the last remnants of the gold standard.
Since then, the dollar has been a pure fiat currency. This allows the Fed to print as many dollars as it pleases. And—without the gold standard to hold it in check—it does precisely that.
The US money supply has exploded 2,075% since 1971.
There’s an important lesson here: The Federal Reserve is the mortal enemy of the common man.
The Four Tenets of Lasting Wealth
Eventually, I think this trend will lead to a genuine crisis. And it won’t be pretty.
In the meantime, a perfect storm of economic pressures will further hollow out the middle class. Tens of millions of Americans will be kicked down the ladder.
As Doug Casey puts it:
Most middle-class people will end up joining either the upper or lower classes—mostly the lower—and that’ll be a moral disaster for the country.
If you want to firmly establish yourself in the world of the “rich,” I recommend…
-
Owning hard assets like physical gold, silver, and certain real estate.
-
Owning the highest-quality, elite businesses. Think businesses with attractive dividend yields—even better if you buy these standouts at bargain prices.
-
Holding some speculative investments. They can leapfrog your wealth. Think transformative technologies like cryptocurrency and blockchain, the booming cannabis industry, and natural resource stocks.
-
Protecting what you’ve earned from taxation, inflation, and other forms of confiscation by internationalizing your assets. This reduces the threat any one particular government poses to your wealth.
These are the four tenets of lasting wealth. They’re time-tested strategies. And they work.
-
- Company Selling Real-Time Cell Phone Tracking Ends Up Leaking Location Data
On Tuesday we covered a disturbing story from the New York Times and ZDnet.com detailing how some of the country’s largest cellular providers have been selling your real-time location information, allowing a Texas-based prison technology company, Securus, to track any phone “within seconds” – all without a warrant – through an intermediary called LocationSmart.
Now, as KrebsOnSecurity reports, in addition to a story from Motherboard on a hacker which had broken into the Securus servers and stolen the usernames, email addresses, phone numbers and other information of 2,800 users – mostly law enforcement, it turns out that a flaw in LocationSmart’s tracking demo website gave anyone the ability to surveil anyone else’s cell phone on the open web.
Several hours before the Motherboard story went live, KrebsOnSecurity heard from Robert Xiao, a security researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who’d read the coverage of Securus and LocationSmart and had been poking around a demo tool that LocationSmart makes available on its Web site for potential customers to try out its mobile location technology. –KrebsOnSecurity
The demo, which has since been taken down, was a free service that would give anyone the approximate location of their own cell phones by entering their name, email address and phone number into a form. LocationSmart’s service would then text the supplied phone number and request permission to ping that device’s nearest cellular tower. Once consent was obtained, the service would then reveal the subscriber’s approximate latitude and longitude on a Google Street View map.
As Krebs notes, “It also potentially collects and stores a great deal of technical data about your mobile device. For example, according to their privacy policy that information “may include, but is not limited to, device latitude/longitude, accuracy, heading, speed, and altitude, cell tower, Wi-Fi access point, or IP address information.”
But according to Xiao, a PhD candidate at CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, this same service failed to perform basic checks to prevent anonymous and unauthorized queries. Translation: Anyone with a modicum of knowledge about how Web sites work could abuse the LocationSmart demo site to figure out how to conduct mobile number location lookups at will, all without ever having to supply a password or other credentials.
“I stumbled upon this almost by accident, and it wasn’t terribly hard to do,” Xiao said. “This is something anyone could discover with minimal effort. And the gist of it is I can track most peoples’ cell phone without their consent.”
Xiao’s tests showed that he could easily command LocationSmart’s service to ping the closest cell phone tower to a subscriber’s mobile device. He says he checked a friend’s cell phone number multiple times over a few minutes while that friend was moving – and he was able to manually plug the provided coordinates into Google Maps to track his directional movement.
“This is really creepy stuff,” Xiao said, adding that he’d also successfully tested the vulnerable service against one Telus Mobility mobile customer in Canada who volunteered to be found. (Krebs)
Before LocationSmart’s demo was taken offline today, KrebsOnSecurity pinged five different trusted sources, all of whom gave consent to have Xiao determine the whereabouts of their cell phones. Xiao was able to determine within a few seconds of querying the public LocationSmart service the near-exact location of the mobile phone belonging to all five of my sources.
One of the queries “came within 100 yards of their then-current location” says Krebs, while another was 1.5 miles away. The remaining participants in the test say that the results were accurate to approximately 1/5 to 1/3 of a mile at the time.
When Krebs reached out to LocationSmart Founder and CEO Mario Proietti, he said that the company was investigating.
“We don’t give away data,” Proietti said. “We make it available for legitimate and authorized purposes. It’s based on legitimate and authorized use of location data that only takes place on consent. We take privacy seriously and we’ll review all facts and look into them.”
It’s not clear exactly how long LocationSmart has offered its demo service or for how long the service has been so permissive; this link from archive.org suggests it dates back to at least January 2017. This link from The Internet Archive suggests the service may have existed under a different company name — loc-aid.com — since mid-2011, but it’s unclear if that service used the same code. Loc-aid.com is one of four other sites hosted on the same server as locationsmart.com, according to Domaintools.com. –KrebsOnSecurity
***
Last week Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) sent a letter to the FCC demanding an investigation into Securus, after the New York Times revealed that former Mississippi County sheriff Cory Hutcheson used the service almost a dozen time to track the phones of other officers, and even targeted a judge.
Between 2014 and 2017, the sheriff, Cory Hutcheson, used the service at least 11 times, prosecutors said. His alleged targets included a judge and members of the State Highway Patrol. Mr. Hutcheson, who was dismissed last year in an unrelated matter, has pleaded not guilty in the surveillance cases. –NYT
Hutcheson has pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawful surveillance.
How did this happen?
How is it that LocationSmart obtained real time location data on millions of Americans? Moreover, who else has access to that information?
Kevin Blankston, director of New America’s Open Technology Institute told ZDNet in a phone call that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It does not restrict carriers from disclosing information to other companies – a loophole Blankston calls “one of the biggest gaps in US privacy law.”
“The issue doesn’t appear to have been directly litigated before, but because of the way that the law only restricts disclosures by these types of companies to government, my fear is that they would argue that they can do a pass-through arrangement like this,” he said.
LocationSmart, a California-based technology company, is one of a handful of so-called data aggregators. It claimed to have “direct connections” to cell carrier networks to obtain real-time cell phone location data from nearby cell towers. It’s less accurate than using GPS, but cell tower data won’t drain a phone battery and doesn’t require a user to install an app. Verizon, one of many cell carriers that sells access to its vast amounts of customer location data, counts LocationSmart as a close partner. –ZD Net
LocationSmart boasts coverage of 85 percent of the country due to its relationships with major US carriers – including Virgin, Boost, MetroPCS and US Cellular, along with Canadian providers Rogers, Telus and Bell.
We utilize the same technology used to enable emergency assistance and this includes cell tower and cell sector location, assisted GPS and cell tower trilateration,” said a case study on the company’s website.
“With these location sources, we are able to locate virtually any US based mobile devices,” the company claimed. The precise location of a target can be returned in as little as 15 seconds, according to a different study.
ZDNet reached out to carriers for comments. What follows is their responses:
Sprint spokesperson Lisa Belot said the company shares personally identifiable location data “only with customer consent or in response to a lawful request such as a validated court order from law enforcement.”
The company’s privacy policy, which governs customer consent, said third-parties may collect customers’ personal data, “including location information.”
Sprint said the company’s relationship with Securus “does not include data sharing,” and is limited “to supporting efforts to curb unlawful use of contraband cell phones in correctional facilities.”
When asked the same questions, Verizon spokesperson Rich Young provided a boilerplate response regarding Securus and would not comment further.
“We’re still trying to verify their activities, but if this company is, in fact, doing this with our customers’ data, we will take steps to stop it,” he said.
AT&T spokesperson Jim Greer said in a statement: “We have a best practices approach to handling our customers’ data. We are aware of the letter and will provide a response.” Our questions were also not answered.
A spokesperson for T-Mobile did not respond by our deadline.
“It’s important for us to close off that potential loophole and that can easily be done with one line of legislative language,” said Bankston, “which would also have the benefit of making every other company careful about always getting consent before disclosing your data to anyone.”
Senator Wyden has called on each carrier to stop sharing data with third parties – arguing that it “skirts wireless carriers’ legal obligation to be the sole conduit by which the government may conduct surveillance of Americans’ phone records.”
- Pat Buchanan: A Trump Doctrine For Singapore And Beyond
Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,
After Pyongyang railed this week that the U.S.-South Korean Max Thunder military drills were a rehearsal for an invasion of the North, and imperiled the Singapore summit, the Pentagon dialed them back.
The B-52 exercises alongside F-22 stealth fighters were canceled.
But Pyongyang had other objections.
Sunday, NSC adviser John Bolton spoke of a “Libyan model” for the North’s disarmament, referring to Moammar Gadhafi’s surrender of all his weapons of mass destruction in 2004. The U.S. was invited into Libya to pick them up and cart them off, whereupon sanctions were lifted.
As Libya was subsequently attacked by NATO and Gadhafi lynched, North Korea denounced Bolton and all this talk of the “Libyan model” of unilateral disarmament.
North Korea wants a step-by-step approach, each concession by Pyongyang to be met by a U.S. concession. And Bolton sitting beside Trump, and across the table from Kim Jong Un in Singapore, may be inhibiting.
What was predictable and predicted has come to pass.
If we expected Kim to commit at Singapore to Bolton’s demand for “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization,” and a swift follow-through, we were deluding ourselves.
At Singapore, both sides will have demands, and both will have to offer concessions, if there is to be a deal.
What does Kim Jong Un want?
An end to U.S. and South Korean military exercises and sanctions on the North, trade and investment, U.S. recognition of his regime, a peace treaty, and the eventual removal of U.S. bases and troops.
He is likely to offer an end to the testing of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, no transfer of nuclear weapons or strategic missiles to third powers, a drawdown of troops on the DMZ, and the opening of North Korea’s borders to trade and travel.
As for his nuclear weapons and the facilities to produce them, these are Kim’s crown jewels. These brought him to the attention of the world and the Americans to the table. These are why President Trump is flying 10,000 miles to meet and talk with him.
And, unlike Gadhafi, Kim is not going to give them up.
Assuming the summit comes off June 12, this is the reality Trump will face in Singapore: a North Korea willing to halt the testing of nukes and ICBMs and to engage diplomatically and economically.
As for having Americans come into his country, pick up his nuclear weapons, remove them and begin intrusive inspections to ensure he has neither nuclear bombs nor the means to produce, deliver or hide them, that would be tantamount to a surrender by Kim.
Trump is not going to get that. And if he adopts a Bolton policy of “all or nothing,” he is likely to get nothing at all.
Yet, thanks to Trump’s threats and refusal to accept a “frozen conflict” on the Korean peninsula, the makings of a real deal are present, if Trump does not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
For there is nothing North Korea is likely to demand that cannot be granted, as long as the security of South Korea is assured to the degree that it can be assured, while living alongside a nuclear-armed North.
Hence, when Kim cavils or balks in Singapore, as he almost surely will, at any demand for a pre-emptive surrender of his nuclear arsenal, Trump should have a fallback position.
If we cannot have everything we want, what can we live with?
Moreover, while we are running a risk today, an intransigent North Korea that walks out would be running a risk as well.
A collapse in talks between Kim and the United States and Kim and South Korea would raise the possibility that he and his Chinese patrons could face an East Asia Cold War where South Korea and Japan also have acquired nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.
In the last analysis, the United States should be willing to accept both the concessions to the North that the South is willing to make and the risks from the North that the South is willing to take.
For, ultimately, they are the one who are going to have to live on the same peninsula with Kim and his nukes.
Trump ran on a foreign policy that may fairly be described as a Trump Doctrine: In the post-post-Cold War era, the United States will start looking out for America first.
This does not mean isolationism or the abandonment of our allies. It does mean a review and reassessment of all the guarantees we have issued to go to war on behalf of other countries, and the eventual transfer of responsibility for the defense of our friends over to our friends.
In the future, the U.S. will stop futilely imploring allies to do more for their own defense and will begin telling them that their defense is primarily their own responsibility. Our allies must cease to be our dependents.
- Feds Allow Florida Officials To Battle Mosquitoes With Advanced Drones
The controlled airspace above Southwest Florida might become more congested now that the Trump administration has cleared the way for Lee County Mosquito District (LCMD) as one of ten state, local, and tribal governments as participants in the new Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration Pilot Program.
On Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao named Lee County and nine others among 149 applicants for the UAS Integration Pilot Program that “will help tackle the most significant challenges to integrating drones into the national airspace,” according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) press release.
“Data gathered from these pilot projects will form the basis of a new regulatory framework to safely integrate drones into our national airspace,” said Secretary Chao.
Here is the full list of the ten selectees:
-
Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Durant, OK
-
City of San Diego, CA
-
Virginia Tech – Center for Innovative Technology, Herndon, VA
-
Kansas Department of Transportation, Topeka, KS
-
Lee County Mosquito Control District, Ft. Myers, FL
-
Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority, Memphis, TN
-
North Carolina Department of Transportation, Raleigh, NC
-
North Dakota Department of Transportation, Bismarck, ND
-
City of Reno, NV
-
University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK
“The enthusiastic response to our request for applications demonstrated the many innovative technological and operational solutions already on the horizon,” Secretary Chao added.
The Trump administration is expecting to stimulate economic development through the deployment of drones in agriculture, energy, public safety, media, infrastructure, and construction. Secretary Chao also plans to test detection and tracking of the drones and traffic-management systems in each of the ten selected regions.
“Our nation will move faster, fly higher and soar proudly toward the next great chapter of American aviation,” said President Donald Trump, who approved the program late last year.
According to CNBC, the pilot program allows Lee County to incorporate drones into their fleet of aircraft used to control Florida’s ubiquitous mosquito population. The pilot program could provide mosquito control drone operators with more relaxed federal regulations, such as enabling flights above the maximum allowable altitude of 400 feet.
“The pilot program could allow not only expanded use for observation and spraying but also potentially at higher altitudes or in more remote areas where visual contact might no longer be a requirement,” said Eric Jackson, a public information officer at the Lee County Mosquito Control District in southwestern Florida.
“We’ve been doing this for 60 years with aircraft dealing with mosquito issues, so I’m thinking that might have played a part (in our selection),” Jackson told CNBC, describing the region’s mosquito populations as a public health risk.”Our district relies heavily on aerial operations.”
Jackson said his department used drones for about a year to “take images of aquatic bodies to see where there’s a lot of vegetation.”
“Because where you have vegetation crowding out water, sometimes mosquitoes can grow in those,” he added.
Jackson told CNBC that the department hopes to acquire an advanced 1,500 lbs. drone in its surveillance and pest treatment operations fleet. The pilot program would relax current federal drone laws, allowing the mosquito control drone operator to fly above 400 feet, at night, and beyond the line of sight.
“We potentially could be using it more for surveillance and in more isolated areas for treatment missions,” Jackson said. “We’re trying to be as innovative as we can and as efficient as we can. And if this can be used safely, we’re open to anything.”
“Really, the whole point of this program is to be able to expand beyond the current regulations to see how this can be used,” he said.
“We have pilots in the air, and as the airspace becomes more crowded and people start flying above 400 feet and out of line of sight, [we asked ourselves] how can we make sure we have a seat at the table to where we can help draft these regulations to keep our pilots safe.”
While Lee County is simply one of the ten selectees for the drone pilot program, we are curious to see what the other nine municipalities will do with their new drones. So far, Jackson is hellbent in replacing his fleet of expensive aircraft and human pilots with inexpensive 1,500 lbs. drones.
-
- Ranking The Cities With The Most Passionate Live Music Fans
For many music fans across the country, there’s nothing quite like seeing live music: an exhilarating experience of listening, dancing, and joyfully connecting with an artist and fellow concertgoers. Some people more than others, though, seem to have a nearly insatiable appetite for concerts.
That raises the question: which cities in America have the most passionate fans of live music?
One way to answer that question is to look at the cities where people are interested in purchasing a concert ticket when an artist they like is coming to town. We decided to analyze data from Priceonomics customer SeatGeek, the live events ticketing platform, to see where people in America are tracking the most live music artists based on a “tracks per user” metric.
On SeatGeek, users can track any musical artist, team, or event to be notified of ticket availability. So, according to this data set, where are people following live music the most passionately? And where do the biggest fans of various music genres such as Country, Rap, and Electronic reside?
We found that the city with the most passionate live music fans is Oklahoma City, followed by Salt Lake City and Denver. Knoxville, TN has the most country music fans, while Miami is home to the biggest rap fans. And Tulsa, a city of just 400,000 people, has the most passionate pop music fans in the country.
For this analysis, we looked at anonymized SeatGeek data up to March 2018 to see which live music artists and genres people are tracking. The study includes data from the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., and for music genre data, we looked at the 100 most popular artists on SeatGeek.
So, which metro area has the most passionate users when it comes to “tracking” live music events? The following chart shows the cities where SeatGeek users track the most live concert events.
Data source: SeatGeek
The metropolitan area with the most passionate live music fan base is Oklahoma City, where the typical user tracks almost 21 different artists to see when they are coming to town. And fortunately for the city that has the the most dedicated live music fans in America, OKC just welcomed a new 4,000 seat theater that attracts major artists to the city.
Salt Lake City and Denver round out the top three, with major metros like San Francisco, Boston, Washington DC, and Atlanta making the top 20.
Oklahoma City might have the most die-hard fans of live music overall, but slicing the numbers by country, electronic, pop, rock, and rap music tells a different story.
First up: which metro areas have the biggest appetite for country music?
Data source: SeatGeek
Knoxville has the highest percentage of country music fans in the United States, even beating out Nashville (which came in a very respectable third). On the other end of the spectrum, Miami, Los Angeles and New York were the cities that had the fewest people that tracked country music. Someone in Knoxville is more than four times as likely as someone in Miami to be a fan of country music.
Next, let’s look at a completely different genre, electronic music. The below chart shows the cities where people are the most and least passionate about this type of music based on their tracks:
Data source: SeatGeek
This list is nearly the opposite of where people like country music!
New York, Miami and San Francisco have the most people tracking electronic music in the country. Someone in Louisville, however, is only half as likely to follow electronic music as someone in New York City. Louisville, Memphis and Knoxville are the places that like electronic music the least.
A lot of people across the country like pop music, as the word is short for “popular” after all. But in which cities do people favor pop music over other genres?
Data source: SeatGeek
Tulsa is the metro in the United States with the most users who follow pop music stars to see when they’ll be coming to town. On the other hand, Atlanta, GA has the fewest users tracking the live music schedules of pop stars. That said, Atlanta still has a lot of people that like pop music — those fans just have other interests as well.
A very similar picture emerges for cities that are interested in Rock music. In every city, a pretty high percentage of people track Rock concerts:
Data source: SeatGeek
Salt Lake City has the highest percentage of rock music fans in the country, followed by Denver and Seattle. Atlanta, New Orleans and Greensboro are one third less likely to follow rock concerts on SeatGeek.
Finally, we turn our attention to rap music. Of the top 100 most followed artists on SeatGeek, 44% of them are rap artists (Drake being the most popular, followed by Eminem). The chart below shows the cities where people track rap artists at the highest and lowest rates:
Data source: SeatGeek
Miami, Los Angeles, and Atlanta are the metropolitan areas that have the most rap fans. On the other hand, the cities that favored country and pop music like Tulsa, St. Louis and Knoxville have the fewest people tracking rap artists.
Now it is official: Oklahoma City has the fans with the biggest appetite for live music of any city in the country. Fans in Knoxville like country music at the highest rates, while people in Miami tend to enjoy electronic music. Everyone across the country likes pop, rock, and rap, but fans in Tulsa, Salt Lake City, and Miami do so at the highest rates respectively.
* * *
If you’re a company that wants to work with Priceonomics to turn your data into great stories, learn more about the Priceonomics Data Studio.
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...